5.  The first applicant was born in 1946 and lives in Kerava. The second applicant was born in 1949 and was resident in Helsinki at the time of his death. The applicant company is based in Helsinki. The first applicant is a journalist and the second applicant was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper called Ilta-Sanomat which was published at the time of the events by the publishing company Sanoma Osakeyhtiö. On 1 January 2005 Sanoma Osakeyhtiö transferred all its business relating to the publishing of Ilta-Sanomat, including court cases, to the applicant company. The newspaper has a circulation of approximately 200,000.
6.  On 3 February 2000, during the presidential election campaign, the applicant company published a short article, written by the first applicant and approved by the second applicant, entitled “The ex-husband of [R.U.] and the person in charge of communications for the Aho campaign have found each other”.
7.  The article stated that P.N., who had separated from his wife, had found a new partner, O.T. P.N.'s wife was known as a political reporter in the election-related TV debates and previously as a news reader. It was mentioned in the article that O.T. was in charge of communications for the Aho campaign and that, in her civilian life, O.T. was the communications manager in a specified pension insurance company and a mother.
8.  The article went on to state that, before joining the campaign, O.T. had been active in the same political party as P.N. and that she had been involved in some “insider committees”. The article continued to note that P.N. worked as a director for Finnpro, the company promoting Finnish exports, and that in the 1990s he had been posted in New York, where his wife had followed him, taking leave from her own job. The article stated that P.N. and his wife had two children and that they had separated in the autumn of 1999. Pictures of O.T. and P.N.'s wife were included in the article.
9.  On 13 March 2000 O.T. asked the police to investigate the matter. She requested compensation for suffering and distress and for financial losses.
10.  On 4 July 2001 the public prosecutor brought charges against the applicants under Chapter 27, section 3(a), of the Penal Code. O.T. concurred with the charges and pursued a compensation claim against all the applicants, which was joined to the criminal charges.
11.  On 1 February 2002 the Forssa District Court (käräjäoikeus, tingsrätten) convicted the applicants for having violated O.T.'s private life. The first applicant was sentenced to a fine of 270 euros (EUR) and the second applicant to a fine of EUR 650. The applicants were jointly ordered to pay damages to O.T. for suffering amounting to EUR 5,045.64 and her legal fees and witness costs amounting to EUR 6,500, both sums with interest.
12.  The court found that O.T., despite her position in the presidential campaign, was not a public figure and that her relationship with P.N. was not such that the applicants would have been allowed to write about it without her consent. The information published, however accurate, was not necessary for examining any matter of interest to society.
13.  The applicants appealed to the Turku Court of Appeal (hovioikeus, hovrätten) claiming that, due to her position in the presidential campaign and as a local politician, O.T. was a so-called public figure, that the facts in the article were true and that the issue was important for public discussion since one of the main focuses of the presidential campaign was family values. O.T. worked for a candidate who was a married father of four children, in contrast to the other candidate, who was a single mother cohabiting without being married. Hence, O.T.'s extramarital affair was of importance to the public. The affair had been public, thus information about it could not be private. The information was connected to O.T.'s public function and was necessary in order to discuss an important matter for society.
14.  Following an oral hearing on 12 November 2002, the Court of Appeal upheld the District Court's judgment on 12 December 2002. It found that the information published had had no importance for society but only served the general curiosity of the public.
15.  On 3 February 2003 the applicants appealed to the Supreme Court (korkein oikeus, högsta domstolen), reiterating the grounds of appeal already presented before the Court of Appeal.
16.  On 7 October 2003 the Supreme Court granted the applicants leave to appeal.
17.  On 4 July 2005 the Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal's judgment as far as the applicants were concerned and ordered them jointly to pay O.T.'s legal fees amounting to EUR 2.415,60 plus interest. It found, inter alia, the following:
“... The Supreme Court states that information concerning emotional relationships, dating and family life undoubtedly fall within the scope of private life and even its core areas.
...
Evaluation of the content of the article
The Supreme Court states that the contents of the article do not support the defendants' allegation that the purpose of the article was to describe the political co-operation between O.T. and P.N. The expressions used in the article, according to which O.T. and P.N. “found each other” and “P.N. has found a new partner”, together with the disclosure in the same connection of P.N.'s divorce and that O.T. was a mother, are not conducive to creating a conception of political co-operation, but it is obvious that the intention was to refer to a personal love affair. Even though the article does mention O.T.'s and P.N.'s political affiliations and O.T.'s function in the presidential election campaign, there is nothing else political in the article. Nor when viewed as a whole, the article does not give an impression that it aimed to tell about a relationship that was politically important. Its crucial aim had clearly been to spread information about an intimate relationship of public persons.
Significance of O.T.'s function
...
The Supreme Court states that O.T. has served at the relevant time a politically important function which involved publicity and because of which her person as an official in the presidential candidate's inner circle has attracted justified interest. Another question is, however, whether O.T.'s position has been such that also issues relating to her private life could have been revealed in public without her consent.
... O.T has served the campaign as a hired expert without herself pursuing political office or other public function. As put forward by the defendants, O.T.'s appointment as the person in charge of communications had probably been affected, in addition to her professional merits, by considerations of a political nature. This does not, however, change the fact that in spite of some other former political positions of trust occupied by her, O.T. was not known as a politician prior to being employed in the electoral campaign nor has she, after having become a temporary campaign assistant, stood as a candidate for any political office. ..... O.T. was not a civil servant but an assistant to a political candidate. Nor does it follow from the political considerations of her recruitment that, considering the nature of the campaign, the protection of her private life would for this reason have become similarly restricted as in respect of the politician she was assisting. O.T.'s function as an official of the presidential campaign was not, either, the kind that would have made her obliged in her private life to stand for or become committed to the values advanced by the candidate. Even if the communication between O.T. and P.N. could also have had professional content and significance as to O.T.'s function, the intimate nature of the relationship had nothing to do with that aspect of the matter. The extra-marital relationship was not, at any rate, a consideration that would have had an impact on O.T.'s capacities to perform her function as a communications expert hired for the election campaign. .... The consideration mentioned by O.T. that the reason behind the publication of the article would have been to affect the campaign, has no relevance to whether the defendants have been guilty of violating O.T.'s private life. The offender's possible political motivation or O.T.'s assumption about it have no relevance to the justification of the act in case there were no legal grounds for disclosing information concerning private life.
On the above-mentioned grounds the Supreme Court considers that the disclosure in the media of an extra-marital relationship of a person in O.T.'s position or exposure in public of the morals of her private life was not justified by the public's need to receive information nor by the important interests of society. There was thus no legal right to disclose information about O.T.'s private life in the article on the basis of her functions.
Significance of the position of other persons mentioned in the article
...
As mentioned in the preparatory works for Chapter 24, section 8, of the Penal Code, the restrictions on the protection of private life on the basis of a person's position or function only applies to that person him or herself. Even though it would be permissible to write about the private life of a politician or a performing artist, this cannot be extended to such person's relatives, acquaintances or other outsiders (HE 184/1999 vp, p. 32). The Supreme Court states that P.N.'s position and the fact that his ex-spouse was known from the television are not issues that could change the above-mentioned conclusion and justify such publication of information about O.T.'s private life like in the present case.
Nor has the fact that P.N.'s ex-spouse had conducted election debates on television prior to the publishing of the article had any relevance. Even though it is possible that such personal scenario, which is completely irrelevant vis-à-vis the presidential candidates, interests certain public circles more than the content of the election debates and the candidates' own performance, such satisfying of curiosity is not a fact that would have justified the publishing of information about O.T.'s private life. There was thus no legal right to disclose information about O.T.'s private life on this ground either.
Claim that the relationship was known of by outsiders
The defendants have also claimed that O.T.'s and P.N.'s close relationship had been open and visible to outsiders, and that it was known among politicians. The Supreme Court states that the protection of private life is not only limited to facts or events that take place in private or in closed events. The fact that an issue of private life is noticeable in a certain event or in public places does not mean as such that it would be left outside the protection of private life (see for example the European Court of Human Rights' judgment in the case Peck v. United Kingdom, judgment of 28 January 2003, §§ 62-63; and the judgment in the case von Hannover, in which the pictures found to violate private life were mostly taken in public places). The contrary can also be true if the persons involved clearly show by their behaviour that they want to make the issue public.
Moreover, the Supreme Court states that the fact that a piece of information about private life has come to the knowledge of a certain group of persons through their own observations or private gossiping is not a ground that would permit distribution of that information through the media to a wider public without the consent of the person concerned. Publication of such an article in the media is conducive to causing harm and suffering to the person concerned and to his or her close ones, just as O.T. has described.
... In the present case it has not been shown that O.T., by being with P.N. at the same events or in public places, would have meant their relationship to be public or that information about it should be freely distributable. O.T. cannot be regarded as having performed in a manner that could lead to the conclusion that she, even implicitly, would have given her consent to the distribution of the information written in the article.
Conclusions
On the basis of the above-mentioned, the Supreme Court, like the lower instances, has come to the conclusion that the publication of the article violated O.T.'s private life. The act was intentional, a fact which has not even been contested before the Supreme Court. [The first and second applicants] have thus been guilty of invasion of private life, as already held by the lower courts. .....”
18.  The outcome of the Supreme Court's judgment was not unanimous, one of the Justices gave a dissenting opinion. According to him, and taking into account the direct effect of the Strasbourg Court's judgments, the exceptions to Chapter 27, section 3(a), of the Penal Code had to be interpreted extensively, both regarding the extent of the political activity and the scope of a matter of interest to society. O.T.'s recruitment to the presidential election campaign had attracted political interest due to the fact that her party political background was different from that of the candidate she was assisting. There had been public speculation that, by her appointment, her candidate had tried to attract voters from her party and especially female voters. Even though it could not be said that O.T. had, by taking part in the election campaign, become a public figure, she must have understood that, as an important figure in the inner circle of one of the two candidates, she would also attract public interest. O.T. had thus been politically active and this activity had been public. As to the article, the Justice noted that the information about O.T.'s private life, even if not strictly relevant to her functions as the communications official, was conducive to contributing to public debate through the fact that family values had been at the centre of the political value debate in the presidential campaign. The article did not only satisfy the curiosity of certain readers but it also contributed to an important matter of public interest as political background information. One could rely on criminal law sanctions in a case of political journalism only exceptionally, namely if freedom of expression was clearly abused. As this was not so in the present case, the Justice did not consider the publication of the article as a punishable act and would have annulled the previous judgments.